WORLD Magazine's Annual Roe v Wade Issue

A pro-baby wave
Roe v. Wade | Optimistic signs point to a changing abortion debate | Marvin Olasky

Societies change from the top down or the bottom up.

The abortion regime in the United States arrived via top-down imposition.

A Gallup poll in 1972 showed 66 percent of Americans opposing abortion legalization. That year Detroit newspapers heavily supported a Michigan referendum to establish abortion on demand through the first five months of pregnancy, but 61 percent of Michigan voters said no. In North Dakota, 77 percent of voters turned down a similar referendum. Nevertheless, in 1973 seven U.S. Supreme Court justices imposed their beliefs on the nation.

Over time, top-down pressures have an effect on popular sentiment. That's why Moody, the evangelical magazine, asked in 1980 whether evangelicals had been co-opted: "We've organized no protest. . . . The Catholics have called abortion 'The Silent Holocaust.' The deeper horror is the silence of the evangelical."

Read the rest of the article here.